Posts Tagged ‘Creative Business Ideas’

Over the next 25 posts, ending on my birthday, I will be covering an incredibly creative moment or idea from a year of my life AND one creative moment in either the marketing, advertising, technology or media world.

1985 was an active year for me, and one of many firsts. Of course, being rather type A from the moment I was born, I wanted to do everything early. This meant I started talking (and apparently never stopped) at 8 months, and was walking by 10 months. According to my parents, neither of these were a surprise, and the fact that once I started walking and talking they could barely contain me? Well, no surprise either.

In the world of marketing – 1985 marked the year that Coca-Cola released New Coke and almost ruined their entire brand in one fell swoop. Luckily, they realized their mistake in just 79 days and were able to maintain some form of dignity after pulling new coke from the shelves.

1985… the year I learned to walk & talk, and Coca-Cola learned how to listen.

I can only imagine the conversation between the managers when they decided to open this business:

Manager 1: I want a business for women, like a beauty parlor! But also something that attracts men.

Manager 2: Men like machines and working parts. Like chainsaws. But I don’t want to sell anything.

M1: Okay, so let’s open a beauty parlor and chainsaw repair!

M2: Well, I think we need something that will keep them here longer, so they’ll spend more.

M1: Hmmm…what if it became a Night Club too?

M2: Perfect!

While this may seem like a completely far fetched conversation, and that no “normal” business owner would ever think of combining 3 so different services into one, this happens more often than I’d like to see. Look around you at some of the companies you have worked with. They may not be trying to combine hair, chainsaws and night clubs, but that doesn’t mean their business combination works. For example, have you ever talked with a company where no matter what you request, their answer is “we do that too!” Doesn’t it make you wonder about the quality that they offer since they are so diversified?

When you start a business, it is easy to want to say “I do that too!”, it makes you feel like you can get more business, and more business is good right? Unfortunately, it is usually short lived since when you offer everything, people find it hard to know what you do best (or how to refer you other clients). The reason I discuss this point, and feel qualified to talk about it, is that I have dealt with this. When I first decided to start my business, I fell into the trap. You want a website? I can do that. Want a sales page written? I can do that too. Want me to ride a bike with a monkey? Well…that I might pass on, but you get my point. What I found was I had trouble finding clients because there was too big of a net. But, once I narrowed by business to what I love to do (and am good at): blog management and blog design, I was getting referrals, and business was improving.

Narrowing my focus allowed me to promote to specific clients, and helped my clients know how to refer me business.

The overall point? If you try to provide services to everyone, you will provide services to no one.

I am an extremely hard to surprise person. Companies really have to go out of the way to impress me, but when they do, I am more than happy to share my experience. This is the case with my recent interaction with Portola Coffee.

A little over a month ago, I was on twitter complaining about the lack of coffee in my system. Within a few minutes, I received a tweet from Portola Coffee, mentioning their delivery service. Being one who hates to go to the store, and always up for good coffee, I checked out their site. After looking through, I noticed that it only mentioned Irvine delivery, so I tweeted them back and asked what I should do if I didn’t live in Irvine. They happily responded that they would deliver to Mission Viejo (where I live) and even recommended a type of coffee to try. At this point, I should admit that I am a Starbucks Costa Rican coffee addict. I make a fresh pot every morning and usually have had 2-3 cups by noon. It is my pick me up and I rarely drink anything else unless I have to. And I’ve tried everything – Peets, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Diedrich, you name it, I’ve tried it and none have been better than my Starbucks blend. So, it was a really scary idea to try something new, and well, I kind of forgot about ordering any pretty quickly.

But,  once I actually started chatting with @portolacoffee, and then @portolacoffeews a little more, I was starting to consider testing them out. So, last week, I was so happy to finally get to meet 2 of the Portola ladies, Christa and Asea at the OC Tweetup. They filled each gift bag with one of their bags of coffee, and I was looking forward to a risk-free test. Unfortunately, I got home and realized that it was whole bean, and I didn’t have anything to grind it with.

The problem for me was that I now really wanted to test the coffee, and since I couldn’t try the sample, I decided yesterday I would have to order some. I went to the website and was surprised at how much information was there. They have information about how it’s grown, harvested and turned into beans. I checked out their delivery, and was really pleased to see that the minimum was only 2 bags (I was a little worried that I would have to order a full case!). I love Central American coffees, and so I decided to order their Costa Rican Blend. The first thing that I noticed when ordering was the fact that I could specify the type of grounds I needed. When I was unsure which one, all I had to do was ask @portolacoffee and she helped me figure out what to order! She also recommended that instead of ordering 2 of the same bag (minimum order for shipping), to try out something new too. So, I decided to try their artisan blend, named “Holy Grail” as well. The ordering process was super simple and of course, delivery was free. I also noticed that they ship anywhere in the nation (maybe even world?) so you can get their coffee even if you don’t live in Orange County.

The one thing I didn’t notice was when they would deliver the coffee, but I assumed a few days.

Well color me surprised when my doorbell rang this afternoon and there was Christa with my coffee. Although, she may have been more surprised to have me answer the door in sweats and no makeup…one of the side effects from working at home. *Sorry Christa, I promise, next time I’ll be a little more presentable *

Normally, I won’t make coffee in the afternoon, as I am usually perky enough, but this was a special occasion, so I figured I could make an exception and fired up a pot of the Costa Rica blend.

Oh. My. God. Seriously. Unbelievably good. Strong, but not overpowering, smells like heaven and tastes even better…if only you could smell and taste through the internet, you would understand why I can simply state that I am officially converted. No more Starbucks for me. I am now a Portola Coffee convert.

So, what is the point of this post? Why am I talking about my twitter conversation that led to coffee conversion?

It comes down to one point: Even the best social media marketing requires a good product to back it up. Portola Coffee’s marketing made me want to try their coffee, and the amazing personalities that work for them convinced me to finally order some. But had it not been stellar, I wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it, share it and help people learn about it. I wouldn’t have desperately wished I had ordered more.  So the answer is YES, a local company can, and did break me of Starbucks.

How can you get people to convert to you?

Have a Kindle? Then you need to*:

Never miss a creative idea, never miss a writing tip…

*c’mon,  a little promotion is allowed, it is my blog after all

Hello to all the readers of Wright Creativity! I would like to introduce you to Kyle Reddoch, the new weekly web/code guru. He will be writing weekly post to help my readers on the more technical side. He is not only a great resource, but a good friend who I rely on for all my coding work. Enjoy (and check out his bio at the end of the post)!

The first step in getting your website up and running is picking your domain name. You want to pick the right one that best portrays your business, industry, or relevat to what your website is.

Company Website

You first will want to try seeing if your company’s name is available as a domain name. If so, great then you are on the way. If not, you will have to do a little more research. What does your business provide? What is your industry? For example, my company does web design, hosting, maintenance, domain registration, etc. everything a person will need to get a website up and running. Now, luckily my business name was available as a domain name! I currently have registered; www.theeverydaywebexpert.com and www.kylereddoch.com, both of which goes to my company’s website.

Let’s say that my company’s name wasn’t available. What would I do? Well I would have to look to what my company does. Maybe even the region where my company is located, or town. I would then put all those together and find the right domain. Here are some possible domains that I could use for my industry:

• www.yourtexaswebexpert.com
• www.texaswebexpert.com
• www.mywebsiteexpert.com

Just take some time to search available domains and find the right one that fits your company.

Personal Website / Blog

If you are creating a website for personal use or a blog, you might want to go a different route to decide your domain name. For personal websites or blogs, you can have your name as the domain name. For instance, www.kylereddoch.com is a great one for me . You can also have a domain name that suits what the purpose of the website or blog is about.

You want to make the domain name easy to remember though. You don’t ever want a person trying to remember your domain name…because in all reality, they won’t.

There are thousands of possibilities for domain names out there, you just have to find the RIGHT one!

Kyle Reddoch is the Owner of The Everyday Web Expert, a full service web design firm located in Amarillo, TX. He is also a featured writer on many blogs. He loves every minute of his life with his wonderful wife and two kids at their home in Amarillo.

For the longest time, I never had an image show up when I was posting comments…even on my own blog! Finally, I did some simple investigating and found gravatar.com. According to their site:

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?

Honestly, it took 5 minutes to sign up with my email address and the image that I wanted, and poof, within about 30 minutes, all my icky grey avatars turned into pictures of me!

Do you have a gravatar? You should!

Blogging is not about writing, it is about conversation, it is about knowledge, and about listening. Problogger points out that many bloggers forget to take a step away from their wordpress dashboard to see what is going on around them. The solution? Set up alerts to monitor what is going on in your niche! My challenge for day 10 of the Problogger’s 31D2BBB is to set up those alerts and start monitoring what is going on.

The suggestion from problogger is to monitor 2 different types of things:

1. Industry Words – these are words relevant to your blog’s niche. For example if you blog about the wedding industry you might like to monitor words like ‘wedding dress’. If you blog about Britney Spears – you’ll want to be watching for any use of her name. The key is to find keywords that highlight when stories are breaking about your industry but ones that don’t overwhelm you with results.
2. Vanity Alerts – these are keywords that are specifically relevant to you. They include your personal name, your blog’s name, company name, brand names and even URLs.

He suggests using Google Alerts, Technorati Alerts and Twitter.

A couple weeks ago, I set up a google alert for my name first recommended by Ari Herzog’s post*. It has helped me to see when people are talking about me, linking to me and using my work. I have definitely learned a lot just from that alert. I am now going to go back into google and set up some alerts for creative writing, blogging and fashion (my newest project), and creative marketing ideas. Currently, I also use tweetdeck to monitor certain things in the twittersphere – I have permanent searches running for #tworco (twitter orange county group), blog design and freelance writer (for job opportunities). I think I will leave twitter alone as it is. Lastly I am going to head to technorati and check out its monitoring system and see what I can add there. I suggest that if you haven’t get started monitoring things that interest you and will feed your creative channels. It will help with blog topics, networking and the knowledge of the new.

What alerts are you setting up and why? If you aren’t, why not? (it’s okay to disagree!)

*I am really going to have to start charging Ari for all the times I mention him…either that or finally meet him in person!

Creativity is not to be taken for granted, it is not something you ‘have’ it is something that you must work at, and practice, to keep strong. I practice my creativity daily, by writing, twittering, designing and researching. I am always trying to find new, unique ways to practice my creativity. One of my favorite ways is to pick a photo from flickr, and create a marketing campaign for a product, using the image. I don’t do it for work, or because I have to, but because it helps my mind to stay sharp and think outside of the box. So, I figured I would let you all try it with me today. Here is the image that I chose:

And here are the questions you have to answer:

1. What product would you use this image for
2. What would the tagline be for the product
3. Where would you promote it (web, billboard, tv, etc)
4. What would you expect people to visualize when they saw the image
5. What other colors would you use with the image
6. What fonts would be great to use with the image

Please leave your answers to any or all of the questions in the comments. I will be interested to see what you choose to use the image for, and what you can picture!

*photo courtesy of Flickr – mandj98

Today at work, I got a card in the mail that blew my mind. One of the people that followed me, @Enthusem, sent me this card instead of a silly auto-dm. Not only was it delivered in a pretty cool envelope, it definitely caught my attention. I honestly hadn’t realized I was even following @enthusem (sorry Steve) but once I got this card, I took a look. Basically, it is a customized card with my actual name (not my twitter name), addressed directly to me, that introduces Steve and his business, Enthusem Cards. His goal, as you can see from his twitter profile, is to prove that postal mail has a place in social networks. Inside of the card was a note to me that asked for my review of his site (as it is still in Beta) and I wold get a few free credits to send out similar cards as a thank you for my review. But it didn’t sound like he sent it to everyone, as it was personalized for me, included notes about how I use twitter and was not just a generic ‘check this out’. Now, I am not a fan of junk mail, but his product wasn’t junk mail. It was so well put together, and so creative, that I had to ask him more about it.

The following is Steve’s explanation of Enthusem, how it came to be and where it is headed in the next year:

About five years ago, I developed a system for creating and managing personalized URLs (PURLS) and personalized microsites to tie direct mail programs to online content. That system – prospectLINKS was a great tool for larger companies who wanted to tie large volume direct mail campaigns into personalized online content. It was one of the very first commercial PURL platforms and I had a blast developing it but I accepted an offer from Printable Technologies and sold it in Jan of 2007.

After selling prospectLINKS, I had too much time on my hands. I began thinking a lot about the future of printed mail and how it was being changed by all of the cool stuff that was happening online. Although a lot of people were saying that direct mail was falling out of favor I couldn’t help thinking that it was just being done in a way that didn’t sync with the way things were changing in our super connected, ultra aware world. For example, most direct mail is still done the same way it’s been done for decades. You get a giant list of people and you mail a gazillion pieces of hopefully relevant but never personal mailers to them. Sure mailers these days can look more personal but for the most part people are way too smart to believe that any of those message were truly intended just for them. The other thing that was bugging me was that everyone in the direct mail industry was using the term “one-to-one” but that was never really the case – it’s never one-to-one if you’re mailing to a list, no matter how many data fields you merge into the message.

About the same time I was obsessing over the non one-to-one reality in direct mail, I started getting into the social networking stuff. There was such a contrast; online it seemed people loved connecting and communicating with other while most direct mail was considered a waste (and rightfully so) or just plain junk.

Then one day I was talking to someone who was telling me about a greeting card they’d gotten from a friend. She was noticeably enthused (I had to know I’d use that word someplace ) about getting that card. But, she mentioned that it seemed like people don’t send personal written communications anymore but that it used to be a lot more common. At first I wondered why and then it hit me, people hadn’t stopped sending truly personal communications they’d just moved them online.

That’s when I really started obsessing over the question that we’re trying to answer with enthusem. That question – is there a place for printed communications in the world of social networking? I thought the answer was yes but I couldn’t find anyone who’d linked the two so I thought it fun and challenging to try.

We got a small team together (four people initially) and we made enthusem our full time focus – that was sometime in later 2007 (I think, exact dates should be on our blog). We got a very early (and very buggy) version up and running in February of 2008 but most of the early beta testers said it was mildly cool and some even said it stunk. So, we scrapped the first version and decided to rebuild everything from the ground up and we released the second beta version (the current version) in June of 2008. This release got much better marks from our beta users and so we rolled with it.

Since then we’re gotten thousands of new users and on busy days we mail upwards of 10,000 cards. The original thinking was that it was going to be a business tool that would allow any size company (even a company of one) send truly personal direct mailers that link back to online content. We’ve got a lot of business users but we also have a lot of people sending personal cards. For example, baby announcements with a picture of the baby on the front and a link to a YouTube video of their new bundle of joy.

We also started using enthusem to contact people we follow on twitter and other social networks. I don’t really know where enthusem will take us at this point because it’s too soon to know if it really will be something that tons of people like and use. So, until then we’re just having a lot of fun developing it and we cross paths with some of the really smart people out there who might have an idea(s) on how enthusem should evolve. We’ve already receive a ton of great suggestions like making it simple to add personal video attachments, which we’re working on and making the API’s open which is also in the works. Our next major release is about to go into live BETA in the next 30-45 days and a lot of our users will see some of the stuff they’ve been suggesting so to some degree it’s taking on a life of its own.

I definitely think that Steve has a great idea and I am interested to see what happens in the future! If you are interested in finding out more from him, you can reach him at steve(at)enthusem.com…and tell him I sent you

I promise, I am not trying to ignore all my readers. I would spend all day writing for you if I could…but unfortunately, this is one very evil cold. And it has taken over my entire brain and body. I am lucky that I am even coherent enough to be getting anything done today, I’m not even attempting to be creative as I know I would fail miserably.

Since I can’t be my usual awe inspiring self, I recommend that you check out one (or more) of the blogs that I read on a daily basis: